Dropbox is an online storage service, once you have signed up for free it creates a new folder on your computer and anything you place in that folder is stored online so you can access it from any computer. You can also choose to share any folders publicly, store photos and share those as galleries, there is even a free iPhone app for you to access your files. I recently started using it and so far I love it, I keep all my important files there so I always have them if needed, also more secure if I have a hard drive failiure (Ive never been good keeping backups at home!).

WordPress Backup to Dropbox is a free plugin that will backup your entire WordPress site automatically and store it on your Dropbox account, nice!

WordPress Backup to Dropbox is a plugin for WordPress that automatically uploads a backup of your entire website, including all files and its database, to Dropbox. It has been created to give you piece of mind that your website is backed up on a regular basis.

In this post, I will show you how to install and configure the plugin.

Install The Plugin

Configure The Plugin

The first menu item on the “WPB2D” menu is “Backup Settings” so visit that, and you will see you need to authorise the plugin :

Make sure you are logged in to your Dropbox account and then click the “Authorize” button and you will be taken to the Dropbox site to approve it. Click “Allow” and and you are then taken back to the plugin screen.

Click “Continue” on the plugin settings page and you will see some settings where you can choose how often to do a backup, you can name a folder within your Dropbox account to store the backups and you can also view your backup history and when the next backup is scheduled.

Finally, you can choose which files or folders to exclude from the backup and then the save button:

Manual Backup

Under the main menu is a “Backup Now” item, if you visit this, you have the option to manually create a backup – you’ll probably want to do this when you first set up the plugin to test everything is working ok.

Premium Extensions

The final menu item is “Premium Extensions” which contains the option to purchase to add-ons for the plugin :

Zip Backup : Creates a zip archive of your website and database before uploading it to Dropbox

Email Notificiations: Notifies you via email when your backup completes or has any issues

These are reasonably priced at $9 and $19 for use on one site, or $99 per year for unlimited websites. Considering this plugin is free, I think buying a premium extension is a nice way to thank the author.

This is a nice plugin; I’ve used it on three sites for over a year. The only caveat is that it occasionally stops working, usually after an upgrade. So now when I upgrade the plugin, I go to the settings page, change something, change it back, and then save. I think the paid options, especially the email notification will be nice.

I’m using it more and more, and I find it very simple and reliable. The times it doesn’t work as it should, it’s while having a very large database (> 50 Mo), but it’s probably because of a server limitation. For small blog, it’s perfect. I think we should find a easy way to help author plugin to get financial contributions.

+1 On BackWPUp Plugin, i’ve had that running on multiple sites for more than a year now. Multiple options for storage including dropbox, you can set file overrides, select areas of the site you DON’T want backed up, and can notify you on completion or just if there’s an error. Only errors i’ve had have been my own fault. Oh and it’s all 100% FREE!